


A Study in Survival

by sprx77



Series: The Present Crises [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: BAMF Haruno Sakura, Baby Badasses, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Sakura and her team are going to turn Kakashi's hair grey then white again, Sakura punches through the space time continuum, The Sakura time travel fic I've been promising to write, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-01-10 12:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12299313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: Sakura punches through the space-time continuum.Everything changes.





	1. A miracle of moving parts

There is fire. There is light. She is bloody wounds knitting closed as an afterthought, cold, meticulous and precise sacrifices of chakra for each hit, and the jarring impact of her fist shattering against a goddess' face.

The impact destroys the ground around them for miles.

She is rage, and desperation, and there is a yawning chasm of grief in her, as wide as the world is empty, that she refuses to let consume her.

There is a battle that is a war, an endless fight with an enemy that never tires, and she is  _alone._

Sakura doesn't remember much of what happens. She has been awake and engaged with Kaguya or her forces for days and weeks. Sleep is rare, stolen moments; each scrap and spare bit of chakra is ruthlessly hoarded and used as efficiently as possible.

She feels stripped down to the bones, ragged with all excess parts of her shorn away. Sakura survives. She fights. She bleeds. She survives.

Another cataclysmic exchange of blows. Around them the earth tries to shake apart. Localized earthquakes and tsunamis herald their blows; what's left of the topography of the planet flattens and crumbles in their wake.

Sakura is  _tired,_ though she can't afford to be. Every cell screams in her, a razor sharp focus and intellect bent on living. The beat of her heart in her breast is a desperate thing, a furious and urgent thing, the blood in her ears the only sound she can hear.

It is amidst the usual ache of overextended muscles, the mint-burn of healing, and the push and pull of attack and retreat, bestow damage and receive it, that something changes. Sakura has been a thorn in Kaguya's side for countless hours and sunsets, a snarling wolf that disappears just far enough to lick its wounds, gather resources, and slam back into the melee with a reckless abandon.

Sakura has been trying to kill an immortal for so long that it's all her body knows, and she expects this to be no different, though each hit, each jutsu, each glancing  _touch_ of her hand or weapon does devastating damage to the world around them because she  _refuses_ to give up hope.

It is a wild thing, a snarling thing, behind the breath in her lungs and the constant drought of her chakra system begging for rest, for replenishment. Her hope is more savage than Naruto's was, the constant belief that he could change the world; her hope is more ragged than Sasuke's was, the child's certainty that if he devotes himself to his goal he can  _fix things._

Her hope is more enduring than Sai's was, a fragile, just-born realization that life can be marvelous, that love can exist, that there is good in the world, and laughter, and beauty.

Sakura's hope is a bonedeep, feral warsong, a thrumming that gets her through the days, and the nights, that moves her body like a puppet on a string, that lets her heal and kill and force her body past its limits. It's a bulldog's jaws clamped tight on her goal, all thoughts set aside for neverending action, deliberation, movement; it's gravity, and the smiles she won't let herself forget, the dreams and ambitions of everyone she can remember wrapped tight but never safe in the core of her, every precious memory burned one at a time to keep it alive.

Sakura's hope is all she's got left.

So while she hasn't lessened her efforts to murder the being responsible for the destruction of all she loves-- if anything, it's the opposite, eclipsing her old limitations with every encounter, every waking moment, inching millimeter by bloody millimeter closer to her goal with each breath in her body-- she is a being of observations, of rationalization, of cool and collected deductions, lightning-fast assessments and reactions half the reason she's still breathing, and nothing in the encounter has led her to believe something has changed.

Sakura jerks back her fist in surprise, not quick enough to pull the punch but able to change the angle so that it slides past her opponent. In a quarter-beat she's a mile away, still high in the sky.

A mile is nothing.

Sakura turns mid-flight, eyes on Kaguya, feeling the change as it lurches through her body. Probably someone else might not have noticed, but no one else is alive; Sakura is aware of every iota of chakra in her body, and Sakura notices the moment it alters.

There's a new pathway where there wasn't before, like a jutsu half-forgotten, and chakra  _wants_ to curl out of her tenketsu, twist in just the right way to-- Sakura doesn't know, and has to stop the quicksilver flash of thought as a wave of Kaguya's hand sends black desolation winging toward her.

Sakura dodges, nimbly, tossing a shuriken that expands outward into a swarm, a flock of thousands, uses the moment's distraction to throw herself from a surviving peak to a valley far in the distance.

Her only saving grace is that Kaguya can't sense chakra, not when it's ruthlessly surpressed with Sakura's perfect control-- though the goddess is more than willing to burn the countryside to ash, destroy any cover, and force Sakura out.

She's learned to rest while running, take solace in the comparatively less exhausting labor of crossing ground faster than the winds of a rasenshuriken.

Kaguya can't-- or hasn't, at least-- used genjutsu on her. Perhaps she senses the futility of it; Sakura can sense the intrusion of foreign chakra on her system the instant it occurs, obvious as a drop of ink on a pristine scroll.

This isn't that; this chakra is hers and hers alone.

The sweep of white is her only warning, so fast her eyes can't resolve it into a shape; she doesn't wait for them to, moving back as far as a single leap can take her on instinct. It was a swipe of Kaguya's arm, her senses tell her later, but in the intervening time Sakura has ducked and parried three blows and flipped over a lake, its water rising on on either side of them like a welcoming hug.

Sakura punches the lakebed, lets house-sized boulders rise as asteroids, dances between them for a blink's cover before Kaguya obliterates them with a thought, not even rubble remaining. The skin on Sakura's arms informs her of the heat, even from her new distance. She's behind the goddess now, though-- not that it matters to her sight.

Merely, she's opposite Kaguya's direction of attention for a single moment, and in their battles that's an opening, forcefully torn.

It's a sweeping kick, a dynamic entry that flows into a springboard flip to get away, because any hit that doesn't connect is a liability. Any second of close combat is too long already, Sakura knows, and ruthlessly stifles the frustration in her throat as the move carries her away.

Away, away, away, the endless flight from an enemy too dangerous to engage, and too dangerous not to.

A bright flare of chakra from within her, yin and yang twisting without conscious direction, and it would be terrifying, this loss of control, if it wasn't infuriating. Sakura can't afford any moment of distraction.

She usually engages Kaguya until she only has the energy left for a desperate flight, a retreat to think on what she learned about her enemy during the most recent clash, painstakingly pieced together from the smallest of tells.

She might not have a choice, this time, though each moment of combat is precious, every encounter another chance to learn and capitalize on a weakness, build a strategy up from atoms, and--

Parry, parry, dodge; Sakura slips medical ninjutsu into her enemy's flesh, feels it catch beneath the skin, but where it should absolutely wreck the seemingly human biology, Kaguya shows no reaction.

Sakura keeps her curse contained to gritted teeth, reaches deep and  _pulls_ chakra into her hands. She doesn't have the luxury of handsigns, hasn't for longer than she can remember, so each jutsu has to be utterly mastered before she dares use it.

The upside is that she doesn't have any distractions.

It's water molecules slammed into each other, a tsunami raging out, and Sakura uses it to disengage.

She has to figure out what the utter fuck is going on with her chakra before it gets her killed.

The ball of water had been easier than normal, a prison called from the displaced lake, but before she's even ten miles away Kaguya has evaporated it. A rush of seared air, so hot there's not even steam, hits Sakura's back like a shove from a giant.

It spins her and she goes with it, knowing better to have her back to her enemy even as her skin erupts in burns, a line drawn of red drawn over her and erased just as smoothly by her own chakra in a countering wave. Her armor's lost but it did little, anyway.

A blur, and there's nothing to step off of; Sakura replaces herself with a piece of rubble in the distance, replaces again with one of her weapons from before, far enough away that her chakra  _rips_ out of her, a sudden void.

The same weird lurch as before occurs, infinitely more disastrous, and Sakura uses precious seconds reaching inward, a step she doesn't have to do  _ever,_ trying to isolate the cause.

It's elusive and Sakura would  _snarl_ if she wasn't taking to the trees with as little sound as possible, shoving down her chakra with an iron fist.

The hiccuping aberration refuses to be silenced. A frisson of fear lances through her, shock and dismay as a monsoon of wind tears at the forest, ripping trees out of the ground and into pieces. She leaps from trunk to trunk in the sudden tornado, dodging limbs suddenly as fast and dangerous as arrows from Sasuke's Susano'o,  _really_ snarling this time when one comes at her at such an angle that she has no choice but to slam her fist through it, giving away her position.

She has to dodge and weave, chakra still suppressed but for that little, disobedient curl directly in the center, and when she multitasks slinging a massive oak opposite the wind-- causing it to crash into its fellows with a sound like ten-thousand exploding tags--

now  _there's_ an idea--

and racing to the top of the atmosphere to get over the wall, she  _pokes_ at it, a stab of will.

Cooperate!

Instead it comes unraveled, a flower unfurling, and Sakura has just a moment to panic before the winds kick up, slamming her back down to the ground from the seven miles up.

She leaves a crater, leaves the crater barely after it's formed, narrowly dodging the fist dropped into the center of it after her.

The crater is suddenly four times as massive, force delivered with such speed that the landscape is just  _changed_ around them, the sound barrier breaking too fast to make noise.

Reinforcing and then  _still_ having to heal her spine, in the space between breaths, had taken approximately half of her chakra reserves, but while one part of her mind is cataloging reserves grimly, most of it is still reeling from the golden glow that is sweeping through her, that refuses to be tamped down, that is  _out of her control._

Fear quickens her breath, and Sakura rips a spear of a stick out of her shoulder, pressing one hand to the place where it impaled her. There's a feeling rising in her that begs to be a sound, a pulsing, a quickening, and she has no idea what it is, has no time to  _process_ as she runs for her life, dodging and weaving.

Kaguya has taken the displaced trees in her windstorm and is guiding them at the ground with a single gesture, each huge as only Fire Country trees get-- had they really journeyed so far east, again? The landscapes are mostly unrecognizable, all familiar manmade landmarks destroyed.

Sakura is forced to bob and weave, dart back and channel her dead teammate, be as unpredictable as possible because Kaguya isn't throwing trees  _at_ her so much as where she guesses Sakura will be.

Where such strength should shatter the trees upon impact with the earth, they're sticking in the ground like oversized arrows instead, and Sakura has precious thought to spare deducing how-- obviously, reinforced with chakra-- and how she can turn this around, use it as an advantage--

Maybe catch and redirect one?--

Too late, Sakura realizes this too could be a distraction, just as Kaguya puts a knife-hand through her gut and smiles, beautiful and serene.

Of course she hadn't needed to be physically directing the projectiles, huge though they were.

Sakura's muscles are suffused with deadly memory, though, and hadn't required conscious thought to react; nor had the sudden pain caught her off guard. Her arm had whipped around, tan skin brought to bear in a fierce lariat--

No time to remember Bee's smile next to Naruto's, so happy and sure--

\-- even as her head whipped forward, one hard-headed jinchuuriki's move against another, back when the bijuu existed, when any village stood at all.

It's unexpected enough that Kaguya takes it, a forehead to the face, and Sakura smiles grimly through blood as she throws herself off the arm through her chest.

Healing it is something she does without a thought-- or really, isn't even something she  _does._ The healing process starts on its own, fueled by her chakra. She could stop it, it's still under her control, but no command had to be given to begin it.

Thanks to the heatwave earlier, there's not even any fabric to get stuck in the wound, or stuck in newly healed flesh.

Sakura would  _love_ to capitalize on her enemy's moment of distraction, the sheer unpredictability of the headbutt that actually  _worked--_

Her love for Naruto rears up like a wildfire, burning her  _inside out,_ so fierce an ache that it would unmake her if she were any less  _used_ to it, if she hadn't cried out all her tears back when the nights had numbers and the days had names--

\-- but so big a wound leaves her with near-dregs of chakra left, just a little more than experience has taught she needs to escape.

It grates at her to leave Kaguya injured and as vulnerable as she ever gets, but-- it grated the first dozen times, too.

Sakura pushes on, ignoring the hurts she can't waste chakra to heal, as well as the blurred quality her vision takes, lines and spots erupting. That hasn't happened in a  _while--_ either she's lower on chakra than her body can handle, right now, or--

She's just focused on real, true escape, fleeing with all the strength and speed she has, when the singed hair on the back of her neck bristles.

It's barely a warning, but it's enough.

Pushing off hard against the ground, Sakura hits the clouds again, arrowing through them even as-- yes, Kaguya slams air in the direction, dispersing the moisture in the air to either side of the horizon.

Sakura is already falling back down, using shaky wind manipulation to speed her flight, fist cocked back and slamming hard into the goddess' face.

Too late, she realizes that in the heat of the battle, deep in the familiar motions of retreat, distract,  _hit_ and run-- she'd reached for as much chakra as she could spare. She has perfect chakra control, a precise accounting of how much chakra she has within her at any given moment.

Never before has some of her chakra been off limits.

This chakra, burning gold, had come as readily to her pull as any.

The strange mix of yin and yang, erupted into being of its own accord, rushes to her toes and through her throat and up her arm, but it's too late, she has to _live._

Sakura slams her fist forward with a manic yell, has a split second to register the expression of pure  _shock_ on Kaguya's face as the punch connects--

And keeps connecting.

Sakura punches a hole in the space-time continuum.

Or at least, that's what she registers later.

In the moment, it's just a tear in reality, a sudden feeling of  _give_ to the air itself, which her fist carries her body through.

There's blackness, a kaleidoscope of color-- dizzying, rushing.

Gravity is suddenly  _different,_ pulling her every which way and no way at all, nothing and everything turbulent around her.

The golden chakra is singing through her, warm and wild and choking her, destroying all thought.

It threatens to destroy all sense of self, and that's when Sakura gets over her fear to push back. There's a spasm in the air, in the crowded void of creation, and a surge of-- something.

Sakura struggles for breath, only to discover there's no air.

A sense of urgency overcomes her, the mindless and frenzied struggle for survival, as she claws at her throat, forces her heart rate slower to preserve air, as desperation wicks away all thought.

Sakura has been alone for days and weeks and months, the last alive in a world torn asunder, and through it all hope has sustained her.

Endless and enduring, Sakura's hope is a snarling thing, a calculated predator, a living, breathing monster in her breast that  _demands_ survival, precision in all things, self-awareness, and burns a vigil of memories of her lost loves to force her into the best version of herself that she could be.

The vortex widens, or tightens, and Sakura  _refuses_ to let this kill her when nothing and no one else has managed, when there's still air in her lungs-- even if her vision is closing in, a blackness creeping in from the edges--

Or is that the tunnel?

A lurch, sickening and final, and spinning, dizzying wind.

It stops.

Sakura breathes.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I shouldn't be posting this because the rest isn't written, yet, but I'm going to vibrate out of my skin. Also, shirtless, bloody Sakura with all her muscles is my Entire Aesthetic and I want to share with the world, I'm so proud. I have this *mostly* plotted out and there's definitely going to be more.
> 
> Stay tuned.
> 
> (I'm Tim, and available for lynching/questioning at definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com/ask , as always)


	2. A door left open, just a crack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Around her, a sea of stars, burning and blinding.
> 
> Alive, alive, everyone is alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this on my birthday so the reviews and hits can feel like gifts. Enjoy!!!

The world rights itself all at once. One moment, she's weightless and hurtling through dense nothing. The next, she's jerked to stillness so suddenly her head's still spinning.

She has a body again.

Gravity exists.

She can't move.

Sakura-- doesn't scream. It's a habit born of years as a shinobi, even before silence was imperative at the world's end.

It’s a near thing.

She can move, it's just-- different. Her chakra isn't low so much as  _unformed._ The pool itself is tiny, badly done, and there's physical energy left lazily uncombined. It takes a second, some frustration, and three false starts to get clumsy control over the flow of it.

Immediately, the fog over her senses clears a little, though things are still muggy. She hasn't moved, frantically working to restore her chakra network to something resembling sense.

It feels oddly like her central nervous system was restarted and she's having to reconnect with each part of her body-- or at least her chakra system and reconnecting her tenketsu.

Her cells and muscles are still quivering as she leashes them, imposing iron control on her weirdly recalcitrant body. She won’t settle for anything less.

Finally, everything settles in like usual with what feels like an audible snap.

One breath, then another, and her hair brushes against her shoulders, longer than it’s been in nearly a decade.

Sakura goes as still as she's able.

Instead of grass around her, a canyon or clear-cut ground or a cave, she’s indoors-- not a novelty so much as an  _impossibility._ A room with four walls. The pastel of it is horribly familiar.

Sakura tosses off her thick duvet restlessly, numb with disbelief.

She runs a hand through her hair, only to startle and yank it in front of her face, heart beating fast as a rabbit's. It's small. And shaking.

She can still taste the ash in her mouth, but there are four walls around her.

Moonlight slants through the window, curtains pulled back, the first fingers of dawn reaching purple through the glass.

The walls are pink, three shades off from white because-- because her mother thought it was clever.

This room burned even before Konoha did, though-- destroyed and never rebuilt after Sound's invasion. Before Kaguya, before the war, before  _Pein,_ even. Different levels of impossible, tangible before her.

Four walls, and beyond it a village. It's impossible, but somehow real, no trace of foreign chakra in her system and her breath caught baldly in her throat.

She can see it, as her body moves on autopilot, soundless footsteps carrying her to the windowsill. It’s like a mirage in the desert, streetlamps and the dark silhouette of buildings, stretching into the distance, even the occasional shadowed flicker of a masked ANBU jumping from one rooftop to another. Chakra signatures break the gentle night like candles in the dark, and her senses, spreading out across the village, drink them all in.

She doesn't realize she's backing up until her knees brush against the bed again, a tiny thing to match her tiny form, all of eleven years old.

Perhaps most worrisome of all: if this is a dream, she's not sure she wants to wake up.

Finally, it's too much. Claustrophobic, she throws the window open. It doesn't want to rise. She has to force it.

Her chest is tight. The first wave of air through the window has her stumbling, a foot trying to perch on the sill and launch her into the village proper, but too short to manage.

Sakura's reach isn't what she's used to. Panic claws at her, even as she tries to reason, to shove it down. There's no room for panic, not with the emotions that swell like a high tide. Leaves and street food are scents on the wind, achingly familiar.

It smells like dew on grass, a stillness that Sakura finds horrifically precious, dry eyes burning. She hasn't cried in so long that she's forgotten how. One hand pressed over her heart and the other clenched white-knuckled over the wood of the windowsill, Sakura closes her eyes and lets her senses drift from light to light, humans like fireflies in her mind's eye.

They're everywhere, all around, easily  _thousands._ In every direction lights blaze, fiercely alive.

She's not  _alone._

Chakra signatures she familiarized herself with over the course of years are smaller and relaxed, though no less recognizable, and it aches to be so near them.

Names try to form and she let's them, attaching names of the dead to their lights-- some closer than others.

It’s strange to think of her parents as alive. Stranger still to consider, on the heels of that thought, all the ghosts now breathing in the village.

That there’s a village still standing at all.

Breath escapes Sakura's tight throat, shaky and cracked.

So many  _people._

All of them hers.

It takes less effort than Sakura might have assumed to pull herself from the window, when the sun rises in full.

She doesn't try to reign in her chakra sense. For so long she was alone, the only light lit, and the abundance now surrounding her is a welcome warmth-- compared to the empty blackness, her chakra senses still reaching out like the phantom movement from an amputated limb, they're blinding. (A sky full of stars.)

Sakura is eleven years old.

She knows because her hair is long, her head band stretched around her forehead. She'd only worn it to bed the one time, just after receiving it, and the breathless nerves make that night one she remembers, through a haze of time and change.

As a child, she had been so naively excited.

Sakura flexes, feeling the extent of her child self's muscle tone. It is barely above a civilian's equivalent, which seems grossly irresponsible, ability to enhance them with chakra or not. Orange light shines through the glass once she reluctantly shuts the window, surprised it doesn't shatter. Her skin is pale, unscarred.

She's woefully unarmed.

Where would she--?

Sakura rolls her eyes at her own ridiculousness, turns to her closet. There, under the hung outfits, are carefully arranged shuriken, kunai and shoes.

It's been a very, very long time since Sakura has used brand new weapons. She'd scavenged where she could, looting the corpses of her fallen comrades-- because everyone alive was a comrade, at that point in the war-- of steel and armor, scrolls and rations.

There are no rations in her mother's closet.

There are civilians sleeping in the same house as her, peaceful as infants, alive as they haven't been in almost ten years, though it felt like much longer.

Half her life with them, half without, and she's mostly  _unnerved_ by their sudden return to life.

Sakura knows what day it is, though she's not letting herself think about it, and if her hands don't falter as she dresses--  _shoes_ , honestly-- it's only because of her rigid self control. She doesn't creep so much as walk carefully through the house, shadows catching on every wall. The modest furniture seems like a relic of a time long past, an anachronism-- except she's the one out of time.

The sun rises shining and lovely over a village nestled between towering trees. There's no rubble, not one building destroyed; this is the golden age between the Kyuubi's attack and Orochimaru's.

Walking up the wall of her old house feels like shedding a skin she wasn't ready to lose, her long hair and small body a strange nakedness.

There's a small amount of resistance as she channels chakra to the bottom of her feet-- her shoes. It causes a wobble to her step that's more astonishing than waking up in her younger body.

The control is there. She knows how to move her chakra. Her pathways are just clumsy with disuse.  _That_ will have to change immediately.

Her breath catches again, sharp and sudden.

The roof under her feet seems stupidly fragile, a dwelling of mere wood. All around her is an illusion of structure. Any chunin could wreck a house with a handful of jutsu, elements brought to bear.

She's  _seen_ the village reduced to scrap wood and rubble not just once but twice now.

The illusion is that the village exists, at all, as a structure instead of a people. Konoha is Tsunade's tired smile, laughter jumping from one jonin to another after a mission, chunin complaining at the gate, nine rookies in over their heads and blowing away their predecessors.

The village is an ideal Sai sketches idly, Ino's voice drifting merrily through the streets, Shikamaru's raised in lazy complaint. It's Choji's warm laugh, Kiba's ridiculous challenges, Lee walking on his hands. It's Kakashi reading porn, Yamato relaxing in a sunbeam, Shizune humming as she files paperwork, and Naruto is its beating heart.

Standing on one rooftop, Sakura looks out at all of them, burning splendid colours with the sunrise. Her village is standing and its villagers are alive.

Looking out at it, laid out before her eyes, she tries to call up disbelief or denial and finds hard reason instead.

Something happened, some jutsu gone wrong, a mix of yin and yang chakra in just the right proportions that she's been thrown back in time. Naruto's father couldn't have done it on purpose, or the Nidaime before him, and the reality of it is so much that Sakura can't even wrap her thoughts around it properly, a concept too big to rationalize.

She's gone back in  _time._

Alive, alive, everyone is  _alive._

The song of it is fierce in her, the sound of a village waking below louder and more hopeful than anything she's heard in an age.

She has no idea how it happened, but Sakura can't dismiss what's in front of her. She's eleven years old. Her precious people are alive and well. It's seven years before the fourth shinobi war.

There's a Konoha headband across her forehead and she's got a child's reserve of chakra, tiny but full to the  _brim._ This body has never been pushed for months on end with little sleep, squeezed every last drop of chakra out in a desperate chase. It's new, and fresh, and so is her career as a ninja.

Tomorrow, she could wake up in her real body, nearly a decade older with the scars to prove it, but today-- today she has somewhere to go, and someone to be.

How often has she wished she could rewrite history?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I figured the best way to motivate myself for chapter 3 was to post chapter 2 and let ya'll enjoy it. I hope you do! Should be more action soon.
> 
> As always, I'm Tim-- hit me up @ definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com/ask


	3. an undercurrent of dream runs through us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It feels like a fever dream, fragile light soft on familiar faces.

The morning seems fragile, a scene of spun sugar.

It smells like dew and dawn.

When Sakura shakily takes the steps to the academy, thinking  _ the kids, the kids, we have to keep them-- _

She remembers thick smoke and coughing, blood and yelling. It was early enough in the war that they were worried about non-combatants and casualties. Early enough that there was some concept of an after; the notion soon faded to 'we can rebuild' to 'we can repopulate' to Sakura alone, striving for survival.

Architecture stands around her; people swarm within.

Stepping into the building seems absurd. She does it anyway. It feels like a fever dream, like her head  _ wants _ to spin though her senses are fine.

Students mill about, faces she can't name for certain but recognizes all the same, future genin and chunin she'll go on border patrols with, will heal or give routine examinations to in the hospital.

They blur into a background hum of noise as her eyes catch a familiar form, gilded hair waving like a banner as she turns. She's laughing.

Funny, Sakura thinks, as if from far away. She hadn't thought she'd be able to tune out so many people and sounds, used as she is to anything alive being food or an enemy, hyper-aware and vigilant.

Ino looks up, looks around and her gaze lands on Sakura.

Sakura stares, helplessly.

Before the other girl can so much as open her mouth, Sakura's moved, urgency at her heels, and she doesn't remember making the decision to lunge forward, barely registers anything between them.

She buries her face in soft skin and softer hair, arms thrown around her best friend, breathing as deep as she's able.

A tentative hand goes to her own hair, stops just short of touching her. It’s a long curtain of pink that she’d just left alone, tired of deciding what to do with it.

"Sakura?" Ino asks, stunned breathless.

It takes all her strength to pull away. Luckily, words slide into place; she tastes apologies and laughter, confessions and words too big for her younger mouth, swallows around them and says what she must, instead.

"It's been fun, playing pretend with you," She says, though it takes reaching through years and the haze of childhood innocence to remember the silliness of their academy days.

Fingers rub into her shoulders, Ino pushing her back a little. There's a lull as Sakura tries to memorize her features with an aching desperation that she hopes doesn't translate into her features, or her voice.

"After this, we're genin proper-- soldiers of the Leaf. You're going to be part of Ino-Shika-Cho, and likely to get C-ranks faster than whoever my team is. Don't you dare die fighting  _ bandits _ of all things, do you hear me? We've got to be chunin together."

Ino looks stunned for a long second that stretches between them.

"We're not going to see each other for a while, with missions," Ino realizes out loud.

She follows that thought to it's natural conclusion with a grimace. Her father is head of the  _ Analysis Division _ of Intelligence. She knows the statistics intimately, as Sakura had known only abstractly the first time around.

Sakura holds her shoulders tight.

"Don't you forget about me, clan heir."

Ino snorts, a trace of their rivalry appearing at last, though it's muted with seriousness. She smiles.

"It wasn't just a game, you know. We had fun, and it was a good distraction while we learned, but I'm going to  _ trounce _ you at the chunin exams. You stay alive, too."

Sakura's knees are weak. Ino is  _ alive. _

She doesn't have it in her to play up some kiddy fight for  _ Sasuke _ 's affections, of all things, no matter how deluded they had been and how real it had become the first time they were genin.

Sakura takes a deep breath and feels her own smile form, easy as anything. How can she not? It's  _ Ino _ and she's  _ breathing _ , not covered in dirt and blood and trying to smile anyway.

Sakura intends to keep her that way.

Ino links her arm through Sakura's, grinning.

"Maaaa," She complains, rolling her eyes. "I guess I  _ knew _ I'd be on a team with Shikamaru and Choji-- we've been training for it, for like, literally forever-- but I could always hope, you know?"

Sakura smiles at her.

They walk into the classroom just in time to see--

Well, the first thing Sakura notices is Naruto's chakra, an easy weight on the room that fades into a background hum, impossible not to feel but easy enough for everyone to stop noticing, after so many years as classmates.

Walking into the wall of it, feeling it settle on her skin, is like breathing clean air instead of smoke, taking the first breath free of blood and pain after a broken rib. Naruto is  _ alive _ and even more than with Ino, an important but not integral part of her soul, it feels like a ragged hole in her is filled to see him hale and whole.

The second thing, though, is Tobio turning around and inadvertently shoving Naruto into Sasuke. Naruto had been, for some heartwarmingly stupid and nostalgic reason, crouching on the desk in front of Sasuke.

When their faces collide into the kiss of the ages, Sakura  _ barks _ out a laugh, shocking her own self but also unable to stop.

Beside her, Ino is outraged.

"No!" she yells, force of habit catching her up in the motions. "Damn it-- Sakura, stop laughing!"

Sakura, who has felt that her voice should have been hoarse all day, throat sore with disuse of weeks and months, hasn't laughed in longer than she can remember. To do it now is like shedding a skin, like throwing off the heavy weights of grief-- if only for a moment. 

The cackling joy of her boys alive and young couples with the surreal absurdness of seeing the people who fought and died with her being so young and unblooded. The future she just stepped out of seems impossibly far away-- until now it had been the other way around,  _ this  _ time of her life so untouchably far away from the horror of the present.

It's a backwards reflection, jarring, and the culmination is that Sakura laughs until she can't breathe, holding her aching stomach as Sasuke and Naruto belatedly spring apart, red faced and spluttering-- both of them, even.

Naruto wipes his mouth with exaggerated disgust, like he wouldn't bleed and die for the boy in front of him, like he wouldn't traipse countries and continents or end wars-- start wars-- to be by his side.

Sakura laughs until it hurts, until tears dot the corners of her eyes.

Only then does she manage to stop, bringing a finger to the salt-water with hesitant wonder.

She'd thought she'd cried her last tear sometime after she lost her last friend, carried the corpse of Kiri shinobi in harried flight, hating and cursing that she hadn't had time to heal him and didn't still, carrying him for hours and hours of frustrated grief because-- surely-- she'd be able to stop soon, to do chest compressions, restart his heart, surely it hadn't been too long--

He'd been the last.

And then she'd been.

Sakura stares at the moisture beaded on her fingertip, touched.

Her next inhale is a touch ragged.

Tears of grief had been beyond her for so long, dried up from overuse and the chorus of the endless, uncountable dead.

Now, though--

Now she's in a room of children with her comrade's faces, innocent and unlined. Beyond them lies a village untouched, filled with warriors.

She has a miracle of a second chance and Ino beside her, loudly lamenting missed opportunities. Sasuke and Naruto sit  _ amicably _ next to each other when Iruka angrily calls them to their seats.

Somehow--  _ somehow-- _

Of all the things she'd thought lost, now returned, tears of laughter seem the most impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For contact purposes: definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com/ask
> 
>  _that_ said, I'd hoped for some Team 7 interaction, but wanted to start fresh next chapter on that behemoth. There's a necessary bit of momentum lost because she was, quite literally, stopped in her momentum by this Sudden Time Traveling thing. She's now stumbled and trying to catch her footing.
> 
> Hopefully the wait for the next chapter won't be quite as long :)
> 
> (note: this chapter got double-posted on accident, my apologies for any erroneous emails. Should be fixed now, I caught it almost immediately)


	4. The Journey of ten million miles (starts with just one step)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby steps.

The teams form without much fanfare. Sakura remembers goofing off with Ino the first time around; can’t bring herself to recreate that level of nonsense. She does, however, smile at her friend and wave after the assignments.

It’s only after, with the newly-minted genin heading into the sun-dappled courtyard for lunch, that Sakura gets an opportunity to change something. Her hair is long and ticklish against her arms, the warmth of the morning seeping into her shoulders the longer she stands in direct sun. Still, she makes no move toward the shade, walking along the path easily.

Sasuke had bolted directly after they were released. She considers going after him, oddly tetchy about one of them being out of sight. Naruto isn’t where she can see him, either, but that’s okay because--

“Hey, Sakura! Since we’re the same group, I was thinking we could have lunch and get to know each other!”

\-- she could sense the ocean of his chakra a mile away.

Looking at him hurts, but Sakura turns around. How could she not? He’s alive, he’s breathing; he’s twelve.

Naruto’s eyes are closed in that dumb fox grin he favored when they were younger. He’s short, clumsy and ten times as eager to please than he will be in the future. His skin is several shades paler than she’s used to.

(Though not nearly as pale as it was last time she saw him, and she has to shake off the memory that superimposes itself over his young face: older and desperate and coughing blood around a smile.)

She remembers the day he came back from the training trip with Jiraiya, still obnoxious and blonde but seemingly unaware of how much he’d changed-- or how much he would continue to change in the coming months.

It’s almost-- easier. Seeing this pint sized version of her best friend. The loud and.. Loud.. version of him. She thinks if she were put face-to-face with the friend she’d lost, bleeding and smiling and taking all the light in the world with him when he died--

Well.

Seeing the younger version is quaint. Nostalgic.

(None of the differences matter. Her eyes are more wet than they were a moment ago, and his chakra feels more like light-rain-with-the-sun-shining than a-hurricane-and-a-star, but it’s so close she can hardly care. Behind her ribs her heart is beating faster.)

Nothing has ever been harder than not pulling him into a hug. Her fingers itch with the urge.

“Yeah, sure.” She smiles, indulgent. It’s a familiar expression. “We can go get lunches and drag Sasuke into socializing.”

It feels absurd, Sasuke being so young and generally available. She breathes through it.

“Aw, do we  _ have  _ to bring--”

“Don’t push your luck, Naruto.” She chides. He grumbles but acquiesces easily enough. She wonders how much of that response was habit for him, over-dramatic and bold.  _ Notice me _ .

Sakura buys all three of them lunch with her meagre pocket change. On the way there and back, Naruto rattles on about how cool he is and, when she fails to stop him, how excited he is to be on  _ her  _ team.

When they get back to the academy grounds, he says: “Ugh, where even is Sasuke, anyway?”

It’s the work of a moment to turn her head in the direction of fire-and-ozone; she doesn’t even have to search it out. Sasuke is eating alone in an empty room, easily visible from the second-story window he’s leaning on.

“Do you want to learn something cool?” She asks, fully expecting a bit of resistance. Naruto, at this age,  _ learning _ ?

“Yeah! You’re so smart, Sakura!” He pumps a fist in the air, immediately ready to go despite the non-sequitur.

She’s clearly underestimated his dedication. It’s a little uncomfortable, this hero-worship-crush; in the future it’d be based more on mutual respect and a bit of healthy fear. Even the tone of his admiration is young.

“Okay.” She laughs, focusing on the here and now. “What does Sasuke feel like, to you?”

He frowns hard at the mention of their teammate, obviously displeased. She gets the strangest urge to  _ giggle. _ Irony, probably.

“Whadda’ you mean?”

“Hm.” She takes a moment. Then she grabs his hand, both of them too small. “What do I feel like?”

“Soft.” Naruto blurts instantly. His face is as red as a tomato. He’s not breathing.

Oh. Right.

His crush is stupidly endearing. She resists the urge to cry easily enough, but the feeling is still there, lodged in her throat. Sakura breathes.

She channels chakra into her hand; not letting it pool there, as the precursor to a jutsu, but pushing more into circulation than usually runs through. The skin there immediately warms.

“Reach out-- what do I  _ feel  _ like?”

There are barely words for this, let alone the right words to get through to Naruto, of all people. He learns by doing.

Naruto squints heavily at their hands. She channels even more chakra. It’s not wasteful, doing this-- she’s not expending it, nor breaking up the normal flow-- but it will get tiring after a while.

“Oh!” Naruto announces, surprised. He’s all wide eyes and happiness. “It’s like--” She feels his own energy shyly reach out and would have flinched from shock if it weren’t so familiar.

Well, that’s one way to do it.

At least it’s not visible. She looks to their hands, too. Though the heat of his hand in hers is evident, there’s not enough chakra to break into the visible spectrum-- which she’s seen, for the record, Naruto manage just by concentrating hard.

It doesn’t burn, either. Both of these are likely because he’s doing it completely by accident, of course. Naruto doesn’t have the chakra control to purposefully exude it like this. There are-- or will be, and when will she stop  _ tripping  _ over that?-- a lot of blackened tree trunks in Wave country to prove it.

“It’s like grass,” Naruto finishes a second later. His nose scrunches up, but the loud defense doesn’t come. Sakura threads her chakra through his, letting it push into his tenketsu before pulling it back-- the equivalent to having her blood do loop-de-loops above her skin before landing back in her veins and rejoining the circulatory system, she supposes.

He shuts up quick, fascinated. “That’s-- Sakura that’s so  _ weird! _ ” He yells.

“Grass and what else?” She presses, keeping it up.

A very controlled push and pull, threading gently. Steadily.

It’s stupidly intimate to be doing this. Even knowing that they’ll develop incredibly close bonds as a team, someday soon, it’s-- intimate.

“I--” his face is red again. Redder? Twelve-year-old Naruto had spluttered an awful lot, so she tries not to think she’s broken him. He takes a deep breath, lets his eyes slip closed to concentrate.

The sun catches on his eyelashes, eyelids, cheeks. Gold on gold on gold.

( _ Alive, alive, alive.  _ )

“Mint, maybe?” His brow furrows. “Like mint and grass and new-things.”

She realizes she hasn’t been breathing, kicks herself, and smiles winningly.

“Very good.” She praises, and if she weren’t so focused she might have missed the way his eyes shoot open, jaw falling slack.

Her heart hurts a little more.

“Okay, so what does Sasuke feel like?”

“I don’t hold hands with Sasuke!” Naruto crows, looking very much like he’d wanted to leap away theatrically, only to remember they were holding hands at the last second.

Two steps forward, three steps back.

A voice in her, wry, wants to make a joke.

(One day you’ll do more than that.)

“Well, you’ll have to at some point. Knowing your teammates chakra is important. You have to be able to find each other when you need to, and know immediately if we’re, say, an imposter.”

“I’d know if it was the real you right away, Sakura!” He assures boldly.

She finds herself smiling again, swings their joined hands.

“You will,” She agrees. “Because you know what my chakra feels like, now.”

Deciding that’s more than enough for today, Sakura gives up.

“Sasuke’s over there,” She nods to his position.

“Well, he’s already eating a rice ball so  _ clearly  _ \--”

“Come on, Naruto,” She cuts him off, struggling not to laugh--again-- and doing a bit of balancing with the bentos.

“What do you--  _ oh!  _ ”

Sakura leaps with chakra-enhanced legs, tugging Naruto with her onto a rooftop. Running toward Sasuke with him is as familiar as breathing.

Their team is new, but not fragile. Their bonds haven’t formed yet, not really, but it’s not because they don’t fit, or can’t. They’re puzzle pieces that haven’t gotten close enough to touch, and the distance is the only thing stopping them from fitting together perfectly, edges matching up into a greater whole so smoothly it’ll be hard to tell where one piece stops and another begins.

They  _ fit _ , her boys and her; team seven with actual teamwork is all strengths and no weaknesses.

Sakura was a surgeon, once upon a time. She’ll cut away the distance between them with immaculate precision, break it down until they can come together with nothing between them.

This time, they’ll  _ survive _ .

(If she has to burn down the whole damn world all over again, her boys will survive.)

It’s not like anything can stop them.

She takes a breath, crosses a threshold, Naruto’s blustering loud behind her, hand snug in hers.

Well.

The corner of lip tilts up, a small thing, a private thing. She can laugh inside her head, at the craziness of it all. At how complicated  _ tenses _ suddenly are.

Nothing will be  _ able _ to stop them.

She will make sure of it.

Baby steps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while!
> 
> Sorry about that. I've had this chapter half finished for a while, so I decided to go ahead and finish it up and post. Thanks so much to everyone who has left a comment, and all of you who decide to this chapter!
> 
> I'm definitelynotaminion on tumblr if you want to come say hi. I've also got a discord and you're welcome to DM me on tumblr for a link. Thanks for reading and enjoying this fic, it's near and dear to me. (Shirtless Sakura punching a whole in spacetime is my entire sexuality tbh)


	5. they tame but one another still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura spent years wishing for the boy she knew and got him back in the last moment of his life, shocked small and scared as he breathed his last, everything in her screaming _this was never what I wanted!_
> 
> She'll do better this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Uintuva](https://uintuva.tumblr.com) made an awesome art piece to go along with Chapter 4. [Check it out here!](http://definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com/post/175250123453/uintuva-for-definitelynotaminion-my-first)
> 
> (It's Sakura seeing _her_ Naruto superimposed over the young one, for a second.)

She’s carrying the lunch boxes, which leaves Naruto free to burst through the door like so much chakra under too-tight skin and shove his face into Sasuke’s space.

He barrels into it with such speed and surety that Sasuke barely has time to startle when Naruto grabs his hand with almost comedic levels of concentration drawing his brows taut.

“What do I _feel_ like, teme?” He insists, loudly, by which time Sasuke does finally manage to bristle like a cat.

“What do you— _what are you doing_?” He hisses, making as if to jerk the hand back. Naruto stubbornly refuses, following the motion until they’re chest to chest and Sasuke drops his elbow as if burned to recreate some distance.

He looks so young it _hurts_ , a punch to the gut that twists and twists. He’d looked young as he died, too, in one moment smirking and cocksure as he kept up with Naruto with laughable ease, and in another impaled.

“My chakra!” Naruto yells, as if Sasuke is being particularly dense. “What does it feel like!”

It’s not even a question and Sasuke winces at the volume, so close.

“Idiot,” Sasuke says, irritation and embarrassment coloring a bold swipe from ear to ear, “Why are you touching me, I can feel your chakra from across a room.”

It’s no question, more long-suffering dismissal.

(His jaw had loosed in surprise, unsure until he _wasn’t_ , until fear licked the years from his face in seconds and his eyes had widened, so scared and _young_ , in that moment, the boy she’d once wished for so fiercely returned in all the worst _ways_ \--)

“Oh.” Naruto looks at their joined hands, still raised between their faces. His nose scrunches. “No! The special way. You’ve got to know what my chakra feels like so if anyone tries to be me, you’re not fooled.”

Sasuke makes a horrified noise and, miracle of miracles, looks at Sakura over blonde hair.

“Is this somehow your fault?”

His voice is deeper, which seems absurd. As an adult—well. Cold builds behind her teeth, races down her spine.

She never saw either of them as adults.

Child soldiers til the last.

“Hey, don’t ignore me!” Naruto shakes their hands. “Here—”

Shaken out of her memory (the last times she saw either of them, the most _recent_ time before this one), Sakura starts forward as if to stop him.

“Naruto, you really don’t have the control for—”

Too late, bright blue coronas their fingers.

Sakura pauses, notes with some detachment the way her hair keeps moving, a curtain of frailest pink. It flutters back to her shoulders and—

She lowers her hand, previously raised as if to yank Naruto back.

Well.

She can heal chakra burns.

“Dobe—!” Sasuke had started, equally alarmed, but falling quiet far sooner. Naruto obviously hadn’t headed either warning and it’s not like he wasn’t already in position.

Sasuke’s expression had fallen slack immediately, lips parting as his jaw fell a little. He failed to jerk or shout in sudden pain.

(Blood bubbled over his lips, dark and arterial, surprise morphing to _fear_ and helplessness, a child’s fear--)

After a long moment when nobody breathes, he blinks rapidly.

“Oh.” He says, shocked soft. He doesn’t tear his eyes away.

Naruto’s eyes are shut tight.

Sakura moves to flank them, chakra sense thrown wide to encompass the building. She’ll know if anybody so much as _breathes_ ill intent.

“What does he feel like?” She asks, careful enough. It tastes like ashes until she swallows. This is a new thing, a new start.

It’s rewriting a future where he’d looked at her, lost and confused with a long spike of prehensile hair shoved into his rib cage.

“I.” Sasuke swallows. He looks struck dumb. His lashes flutter. “I’m not.”

“Think,” Sakura cajoles, voice low. Teaching _helps_. _Fixing_ helps. “Make connections. Find something recognizable.”

“There’s so much.” Sasuke breathes. “How--?”

“Pull back a little.” She instructs, rolls her eyes when he hisses. “Do it. It won’t be as overwhelming with distance.”

Probably.

Frowning, Sasuke says, “Okay. It’s—”

His eyes fall shut.

He tilts his head, concentrating.

Heartbeats pass.

(He’d _listened_ to her. It feels like sunlight on her skin, the bright hope of dawn, like a new day where anything is possible.)

“It’s like—a storm.” Finally, Sasuke’s breath fans out, loud in the quiet room. “Once you get past the fact that it’s _everywhere_ and all around, and warm—it’s like a stormfront. The warm air of a summer storm.”

He opens his eyes.

Sakura smiles at his immediate frown.

Sasuke nudges Naruto with his elbow.

“Hey,” He calls, no louder than usual. “Stop it, come on.”

Naruto opens his eyes slowly.

He turns to Sakura, who most have something approving on her face, because he breaks out into a huge grin.

“I did it!” He crows.

“Yes.” Sasuke says, flat. “Let me go.”

“No!” Naruto says, adamant. “It’s your turn. My turn. Whatever.”

Sasuke’s brow furrows and then his eyes widen.

“What? No!”

“What, _yes_!” Naruto says, voice high pitched to imitate. “We’ve got to know for missions and stuff!”

He looks to Sakura, pleadingly.

“Three-man squads have to be familiar with each other’s chakra signatures.” She recites, the words wooden on her tongue, dragging up the words from two lifetimes ago.

She pushes away thoughts of wearing Naruto-and-Kurama’s chakra like a second skin, of Sasuke and Naruto blending techniques together easier than seasoned partners without a second’s hesitation, despite three years of separation and no prior practice, or even a moment to get a feel for each other’s chakra.

They hadn’t needed it.

Sasuke huffs and his face is almost entirely red, now.

Indignant. Embarrassed. She’d feel older but with the way they’d _always_ been so huffy and immature with each other, there’s not much difference between this Sasuke and the one she’d fought shoulder to shoulder with.

(Except there is, there _is_ ; he’s alive and he _listens_ and he’s a blank slate of unformed opinions, a chance for change where, if she’d had time to form expectations, she would have expected _anything but_.)

Naruto’s freckled cheeks are dusted with pink under his tan, from the prolonged eye contact he refuses to break. He doesn’t loosen his grip at all.

(This time, he will not let _go!_ )

Sasuke still looks uncomfortable, tense even when he forces his eyes closed and starts breathing rhythmically.

Naruto looks expectant right up until he jolts, thirty seconds later, and then stares at their joined hands with wide eyes.

“Campfires,” He blurts in a quiet, surprised voice. He blinks, briefly. Doesn’t shake his head, though it looks like he wants to. “Campfires. Um, smoke? But like. Spicy. Um, um.”

“Makes sense,” Sakura allows, taking deep breaths herself. “Uchiha are known for their fire jutsu.”

_Itachi. Obito. Madara_.

Sasuke twitched slightly.

Uchiha are known for their fire jutsu.

Sakura knows better, though.

“Look deeper.” She commands.

“Deeper?” Naruto asks.

A smile plays on her lips. She can have this, she can _teach_. Arm them for a war before its teeth ever break the horizon.

“Close your eyes, Naruto.”

“Oh!” His brow furrows, then smooths out as he complies. So trusting.

It’s barely anything, really, but Sakura will grab onto it with both hands. There’s room here, more than she’d dared hope for. She can make this _work._

“Oh!” Naruto exclaims, tilting his head to the side. His eyelids are dusky in the shadows beside the window. “It’s like a knife!”

_Bullshit_.

Sakura blinks, then darts forward and grabs Sasuke’s free hand in both of hers.

She can’t control his chakra, of course, but he barely frowns before channeling it properly so she can feel it.

Her first thought is: _Naruto’s right_ , because it is very warm, but Naruto’s usually right and she tucks the thought away with long practice. Now that he’s said it, she can’t get the thought of campfires out of her head, the easy-going peacetime fires that burned without much worry for enemy discovery.

It brought to mind unexpected memories of comrades laughing in a circle around one; not exactly carefree, but cutting through the dark.

Sasuke’s chakra tasted as much like fire as lightning, one coming more readily than the other due to stringent use rather than anything innate. It was usually jonin who trained a second element into conjunction with their natural one. Team seven lived to break down expectations.

Fire came to mind _first,_ when chakra rolled through his palm and into hers. There was lightning, though—the fire crackled. It sparked, and tattered embers lifted into full stormclouds, roiling and waiting. It was impatient, but muted. Untapped.

Nowhere was the cutting knife of wind chakra.

“How is it like a knife,” Sakura mutters, eyes closed.

“It’s—you know. Sharp and spinny. Ready to move. Waiting and then it hits!”

Ready to—

“Potential energy,” Sakura realizes with a sigh. “Naruto, it’s _lightning_.”

“No, it’s not.” Then he backtracks. “I mean, Sakura-chan, it _could_ be.”

Not that he’s prevaricating her, as in she _could_ be right; but that his chakra spoke of something that could be lightning, maybe. Like it’s the thunder before.

“No, Naruto,” She says, teaching. “My chakra felt like grass, right? But chakra is only five natures—wind, water, fire, lightning, earth. So grass would be…?”

“Earth!” Naruto grins, dazzling smile audible. She nods.

“And yours?”

“Well, um. A storm, right? So that’s like, rain—”

“Wind.” Sasuke mutters, keeping his eyes closed as well. They’re all holding hands in a half-lit room, three sets of eyes closed.

A heady pulse of what could have been, what _will be_ , rises like hysteria from her lungs.  She fights not to hold too tightly.

“But storms are _water_ ,” Naruto protests.

“Dobe,” Sasuke snorts.

“No, he’s right. You described it that way for a reason. Naruto, flare your chakra again.”

Sasuke doesn’t know enough about what’s coming to protest, or even brace himself. Naruto nods, determined, and a half second later blue light plays through her eyelids.

Both her boys gasp and she would bet the payment from all their D-ranks combined that they’re both horribly pink.

Sakura curls her free hand around Naruto’s and hears the hitch in his breath when she threads her chakra firmly through his again, letting it bleed around the edges to blend better.

Sasuke makes a noise like he’s _strangled_.

Sakura tunes him out.

Naruto’s chakra is _everywhere_. It’s impossible to walk into a room with him and not know it, the steady pressure, but now it’s in her lungs and pressing in her throat.

(Pushing chakra into someone is one thing, but them pushing _back_ —he pushes and she pushes and their chakra mixes and slides and curls together, and it’s like raw nerves dancing and blood slipping through her fingers and emotions so intense she--)

With her eyes closed it’s a little like standing on a cliff in a windstorm and a lot like drowning with air.

That—drowning. Why drowning? Obviously because it’s pressing in so much, saturating the air she struggles breathes. Again, though—

There’s the touch of humidity, of _wetness_.

Blood rattling in a cut _throat_ \--

No.

It’s a hint, an afterthought to the way there’s _definitely_ warm air, where the air around Naruto, when his chakra lights him up, just _is_ warm, moving currents, but.

“Wind.” Naruto says, and she nods.

“But a little water too.” This time it’s Sasuke, surprised. Gruff.

The push and pull of Sasuke’s chakra to hers feels like fire licking down her esophagus, like drawing lightning to her spine.

It doesn’t hurt.

It’s—banked. Soft. The chakra itself is _warm_ even as it crackles, warm and staticky between their palms, invisible and trapped under their skin as their fingers twine.

“You’ve got fire and lightning,” Naruto tells him, sure of himself. He must be, if he feels the same from their joined hands. “And Sakura-chan’s got earth.”

It sits for a moment, between them and on their shoulders. Chakra flows from hand to hand and the connection is—alive. It’s coiled and warm on one side, breath and rain on her other. There’s a give and a take and a blending that catches in her throat like a blade.

“Hey!” Naruto picks up on it last, of course, and shouts to the world when he does, “Between us we’ve got all five! That’s gotta be cool, right?”

“That’s… really rare, I know that much.” Sasuke mutters, and from another building a bell tolls. He untangles their hands with economic movements, _easier_ than he could be for all that it’s the kinesthetic equivalent to a cleared throat.

Sakura opens her eyes to see Naruto doing the same. He looks down at his hands, face going through a series of emotions too fast to catch.

The sunlight slants in, the window giving a view of the courtyard where students are traipsing back into the main academy building. The classroom that Sasuke had picked was in disuse and he hadn’t bothered flicking the light on.

“We should go.” It’s decisive, though she knows its next to useless.

A handful of hours isn’t enough to change something a week or more in motion.

If Kakashi shows up before two in the afternoon, she’ll eat her forehead protector.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I figured out how to hyperlink!
> 
> I'm on [tumblr.](https://definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com) Come check me out!
> 
> I worked hard wrangling this chapter into submission, and think I got it just about where I wanted it. I'd love for you to leave me a comment on your way out. The response to this story in general has been very heart-warming and incredible. We are all united by our thirst for shirtless Sakura punching things. Thanks for reading!


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